


little birds without wings

by vorpatrils



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Miscarriage, Stillbirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 19:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4799507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vorpatrils/pseuds/vorpatrils
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moments in some of Lysa's pregnancies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	little birds without wings

1

The air of Kings Landing was stale and stinking. The smell of it made her retch and her head pound. With a gurgle Lysa threw back the covers of her bed and vomited on the floor, her stomach betraying her before she could reach for a chamberpot. She shuddered as a few drops of bile flew back in her face. Her husband stirred then. Lysa could feel the shame in her gut. _Not ladylike enough, not pretty enough, not good enough._ Jon said nothing, spoke no word against her, would not let her be mocked, but she felt his constant disapproval all the same. She felt him sit up and her face flushed. She reached to her sidetable and wiped her mouth with the kerchief there. Jon put her hand on her shoulder.

“Are you going to vomit again? I will fetch a basin.” He looked at her not with affection but perhaps with exasperation. Lysa shook her head. “My belly is empty my lord.” Jon moved his hand to rest upon her stomach. “Perhaps my lady, not so empty as you think.” His breath stunk, near enough to set her to vomiting again, and she saw an upper tooth move as he spoke. Her lips trembled, her throat went thick and her eyes watered.

She was only seventeen. _It wasn’t fair._

1.1

The babe pained her. She had missed three moonbloods and every day it pained her even more. Lysa was sure she would lose this one, the seed had set shallow in her womb, or so deep that it reached the edge and pulled at the muscles of her hips and thighs. The pains were so much the same that she almost wondered if she was pregnant at all.

Jon stood by the wall while the Maester was between her legs. He would not leave her alone with a man, even one as aged as Pycelle. _I am too much of a slut for that trust_ she thought bitterly. He poked and prodded and his fingers –

She shuddered.

“My apologies Lady Arryn. My circulation is not so good as it was.” She waved an impatient hand.

“You are only doing your job Grandmaester.”

He soon finished his examination. Pycelle washed his hands in a basin and looked to her husband. _Not to me._

“I am afraid your lady wife’s suspicions are correct my lord hand. She will soon miscarry.”

Lysa turned her head to the wall and clenched her teeth. _But of course you will not listen to a womans knowledge if there is a man to think otherwise._

 

_X She holds Prince Joffery soon after he is born, the third lady to hold him in his life.  It will count for something, someday for her son, she is sure. X_

 

2

She is pregnant again when Joffery is presented to the Faith at seven moons. King Robert slaps at her arm and says there must be something in the “stinking damn water”. She has no pain, it is much like when she was with child in Riverrun. Spring has come, a good omen for the Prince’s future reign. Lysa lays a hand on Queen Cersei’s arm at the feast afterward, where seventy beggars are given purses of gold.

“It is a good omen my queen. Winter will not encroach so fast on a prince born when the gods blessed us with spring.” Cersei smiles charmingly but it does not reach her eyes. She places a hand on Lysa’s belly, which grows so fast she is sure she will birth twins. Lysa tries not to flinch. Cersei digs her nails into her belly, softly, so softly she might have imagined it, but for one heart stopping moment Lysa fears the child will be torn from her womb.

“Perhaps you shall have a daughter sweet Lysa, and we shall join our houses.” Lysa gives a weak smile but Robert overhears it and he stands before the crowd, roaring drunk. He declares that should the lord Hand be blessed with a daughter, they will be betrothed, a second Arryn queen of the Iron Throne.

“If the dragons had one so shall the stag!”

 He orders the High Septon to lead a prayer for the health of her child. Lysa smiles and raises her goblet, hopeful that the Kings prayers will count to something with the gods, since hers do not.

 

2.1

Lysa worked on a piece of needlework. The women of the Vale had always been proud of it and she will do as well as them. _I must. I have already cost my lord husband one child, I will not lose another. I cannot._ She was seven moons gone now, a blessed number. Two months after the quickening, another two before the birth. A blessed time. The cloth she embroiders is thick, too thick for a child in truth. Jon has been kinder since she lost their first. She passed her twentieth nameday the day she felt the quickening. She had rushed to Jon and placed his hand on her belly. He had laughed and granted her any boon she wished.

Lysa had thought to be charming, winning and winsome. A good and loving lady wife. She could act it, if not be it. She had requested only his cloak, the same one he had worn on campaign with Robert. She would fashion a little cloak for their child and a blanket too. Jon had kissed her brow and given it gladly, reminding her of Lady Geraldine, and her lessons. She struggled to learn the stitches so different from those she was taught as a child. It had taken her four moons but she had gotten it eventually. _Catelyn would have had it mastered in two_ she thought angrily as she saw yet another little imperfection. She could easily cover it with a little design but her lack of skill still stung.

She shifted uncomfortably; she had been plagued with pains these last few days. Light pain, she assured Jon. Nothing at all like the last time. Catelyn has just had a little girl she named Sansa, and she imagines that perhaps one day they will hold hands and sing together like she and Catelyn.

 

2.2

Her daughter is lost in a bed of blood and she very nearly dies too. The Maester fusses over her, over her daughter, looking inside her tiny mouth, poking about her naked little body. Her daughter lives only a few minutes and Robert, who sat with Jon without, demands the child be placed in her arms before they take their last breath. Her eyes are blue and her hair gold. Jon comes to sit beside her and he presses a finger to her cheek. Her child takes a shuddering breath and goes still.

“She looks much like my sister. Shall we give this one a name?”

Lysa is _furious._ Good King Robert had given her these few precious moments with her own sweet babe and Jon had come to spoil them, killed them with his very touch. But she cannot say that, not without being proclaimed mad, so she says nothing and looks away from him.

 

2.3

She remains nameless, even buried.

 

_X It is Lady Florent that gives birth next. A scandal, but the child is well looked after by his lord uncle in Storms End. X_

 

3

After the last, the Master of Whispers mutters of poison and treachery. King Robert had many enemies and young Viserys-Across-The-Sea is near a man grown, Joffery a babe in swaddling and brotherless with no trueborn cousins to his name. To have the house of the man whose actions started the rebellion in righteous defiance go extinct would be a great boon. The Houses of the Vale could be played against each other in treachery and treason. Lysa ate with great appetite. The past few months she has eaten little but the maester orders her to eat. However will she have a child if she starves herself? _Damn the maester and damn my husband_ she thinks. Jon picks at his food. He has been suffering a stomach complaint these last few moons. Perhaps he is being poisoned. Or perhaps he will die soon, from the crabs in his belly. A common ailment. How wonderful it would be to be widowed.

She is only twenty-two, fair and fertile. It is only that Jon is so old and his seed so weak that she cannot birth a child. He coughs again.

“My lady…” She cocked her head.

“My lord?” She can almost imagine wearing the new fashion, the one Jon though too daring, too tempting.

“I wish you to go to the Vale. You have been its Lady for six years and you have never set foot in my ancestral seat.” She nods. It would be pretty to see at least once.

“If you wish my lord. I find the heat of Kings Landing so tiring.” Her husband coughs again. She made eye contact and gave him a simpering smile.

“There is another matter my lady. A boy, kin of mine…” He trails off and no longer looks her in the eye. She felt her cheeks flush in anger, a cold trickle of fear down her back.

“Young Harry the Heir?” She asked, her voice squeaking. He nodded.

“I would have him brought to my side. He is my sister’s only grandson-”

His words were cut off by the scraping of her chair, the slamming of his chamber door and the sound of her loud sobbing.

 

3.3

Before she left she bedded her husband. Perhaps she will be with chid when she reaches his home, perhaps not.

 

3.2

Lysa reached the Vale by ship, so much quicker and safer. She had never been greensick before and it shamed her. She was a Tully, a daughter of the rivers. She had no business being ill at sea. Her ward had just as much business being by her side. Evidently Jon had been planning this long before he thought of her.

Young Harry looked much like her own daughter, blue eyed and golden haired. His kinswoman Lady Anya left him with her scrubbed and chastened here at the Gates of the Moon. He ate slowly. The poor boy was nervous. He was only eight, born shortly before the rebellion. She sipped at her drink. They would make the Eyrie tomorrow. Her Unlcle looked at the boy, wary. It pleased her.

 

3.3

She had been in the Eyrie for three moons and she was bored witless. It had however, come to her attention she was with child once more. Perhaps she would have reason to send the boy away now.

 

3.4

The air is cool here, far cooler than her home or Kings Landing. It is thinner too she imagines, taking three breaths for every one she would take in Kings Landing. She can feel herself suffocating. The maid –was she Jorelle or Anya?- in the bed beside her does not snore but she does breathe and it is terrifying. One, two three breaths and then – A pause of a few agonising seconds before she breathes again.

She had asked Maester Lewis about it when he had come to check her and the child over and he said it was merely a consequence of living so high up a mountain. Quite harmless for a babe born at the height unless they had weak lungs. Lysa rolled over and clutched her belly. It did not pain her but she hated it still. It should not be this child her belly was full with, not his. But here she was trapped up a mountain by an old man. She had held some hope he might die in Kings Landing while she was gone, that the stress of intriguing would take his heart. But there was no such reprieve for her. Most of her ladies were widows and daughters of the dead.

She had thought it a kindness but she could tell they did not like her. If only she had died when she miscarried in Kings Landing she could hear them whispering. A true valewoman might yet be lady Arryn, not some stripling fish with a rotten womb.

This babe did not feel as it had in Kings Landing the first time, the second nor – the other time. That child was stolen from her by treachery and lies, two more by her own traitorous body. She knew the pain now and had none at all this time. This time she would give him a son.

 

3.5

This one is stillborn, not even a few moments of life to pay for her pain.

She is only three and twenty.  _It isn’t fair._

\---

Sweetrobin is her seventh. “A blessed number my lady, a blessed number.” She hears it over and over during her pregnancy. He is born live, after months of bedrest. She cannot believe it when they put him in her arms alive. She gives alms to seven men every day, gives mercy to seven petty criminals every week until he is seven months old and presented to the Faith. She holds him and is terrified. What kind of man would take him from her? He could be taken so easily after all, his lungs are not strong. She keeps him close to her where he will be safe, always.


End file.
